The View from My Window: Sketches from a Dallas Road Housesit
My days are bookended by watching the sun rise and set over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Some days Port Angeles and the Olympic Mountains form the horizon; on other days, it’s a thick bank of fog. Closer to hand are the bulky container ships steaming past on their way to the next port. For the past few days, small tugboats have been exerting tremendous effort to pull log booms from west to east.
In the early morning darkness, balls of glowing light bounce in the dog park and a neat row of lights is the only indication of a small group of cyclists. Runners move past more swiftly with bands of light outlining their trim figures.
The pigeons are fighting for real estate on the long arms of the streetlight, but some are sure to drop out if they try to fit more than 8 in the space. There’s a flurry of activity, and the pigeons are replaced by one assertive gull.
The dog park across the street is popular all day long with furry St. Bernard’s, smartly trimmed poodles, and bouncy golden retrievers. One day I spot a small lap dog wearing a devil’s costume with a stand-up black collar and two bright-red horns.
A well-coordinated woman dressed in grass-green from the tip of her helmet to the wheels of her bicycle stops and leans her bike against the fence around the dog park. It seems an odd location as she doesn’t have a dog. I look out again a few minutes later and she is surrounded by pigeons. Mystery solved: she has brought a generous supply of seed or grain to share with her avian friends.
The wind has picked up and changed direction. Battered vans and trucks start pulling up along the street and fit-looking men start unloading their gear. Red and blue and multi-coloured, the air is soon filled with the sails of paragliders, while down on the waterfront there are the smaller sails of kite surfers. It’s a challenging spot for paragliders with limited space for launching.
I train my eyes on the water, hoping to spot orca whales dipping their way along the shoreline. No such luck, but later in the day, when I’m out for a walk, I spot the large square heads of two sea lions moving rapidly out to sea.
